What happens when science and politics collide?
Our concerns for the elderly must be balanced by the needs of the young, writes Eoin O’Malley
COVID-19 has us all on an emotional rollercoaster. Each day people all over Europe, probably the world, look to the newspapers for a hint of what might happen. Will I be able to get into the mountains, get a haircut, have a pint? At this stage, all most people want is a sense of an endgame in the struggle to live with coronavirus.
One day a glimmer of hope is given, as we’re told that the Government is considering a phased reopening of some activities; the next, those hopes are dashed — there will be no end to restriction until a vaccine is found. That could be a year or more.
The Irish Government says it will act on the advice of the chief medical officer and the National Public Health Emergency Team. While the medical advice is important, the Government will be wrong if it chooses to hide behind it.
It is easy to make decisions when faced with an apocalypse. Relatively timely action meant our hospitals were spared the scenes in Madrid, Bergamo, or
New York. But in flattening the curve, and maintaining a functioning health service, we were just buying time. The country can’t remain in a semi-perpetual state of confinement, in which the economy ceases to function, unemployment rises, children are deprived of education, vulnerable people are subject to abuse, social isolation takes its toll, and a mountain of chronic health problems are stored up by fighting on just this one front.
The decisions the Government will take in the next month or so on the gradual re-opening of our society are essentially political decisions. It’s easy to be guided by the chief medical officer, but he is not qualified to take decisions on the trade-offs between what is an acceptable number of deaths and what the longer-term damage to society might be.
Politicians are understandably fearful of making these decisions, and especially of being accused of allowing economic priorities trump those of health concerns.
In 1987 when Ireland imposed severe health cuts, Dr Rory O’Hanlon, the then minister for health, went on Morning Ireland to explain the necessity of the cuts to get Ireland out of its economic sclerosis. It was hard to respond when the interviewer said: ‘But minister, people are dying!’
This is likely to be used by the Government when it chooses to ease restrictions, as it must, and there is an inevitable second wave with an increase in deaths.
For this reason, politicians are cautious. They tend to copy what others are doing, even though one country might have very different conditions from the one it is copying. We all prefer to stick to the crowd, because there is safety there. They’ll seek herd immunity from blame. But refusing to make a decision is not being prudent, it’s an abdication of responsibility.
It’s easy to make saccharine speeches about protecting the most vulnerable. It is the job of political leaders to make the decisions, and it is lonely when you can’t just say we’re following advice, following the herd, or following orders from the European Union.
Leo Varadkar is going to be on his own in making these calls. He made a good speech last month, but the next one will have to communicate clearly to the Irish people that lifting restrictions on a trial basis will see a second wave, but that the time between the enforcement of confinement and now has been used to prepare the health system and protects its staff.
Then he will have to tell people that there are other considerations. It looks as if the world has entered the biggest shutdown in modern economic history.
The hope that it was just a temporary freeze, and that we’d be able to come roaring back after a few lost months looks hopelessly optimistic now. Varadkar will probably have to avoid using the word ‘economy’, even though the ‘economy’ is how we pay for society to function.
Instead, there are plenty of other impacts Varadkar can point to. At the start of this pandemic, we were told the schools were closing because children were vectors, not victims of this disease. Miraculously they do not seem to be badly affected by its direct effects.
Children are indirect victims, however. Keeping children out of school denies them the opportunity to learn, socialise, relax, and play in safe spaces. Schools being shut will exacerbate all sorts of inequalities Ireland has spent decades trying to close. We know that there is a ‘summer learning loss’, where during the holidays school kids lose about a quarter of what they have learned during the year. This is much more pronounced among the disadvantaged, who don’t have access to summer camps or holidays that can stimulate them.
Middle-class parents are much more likely to be able to work from home and offer some supervision of their children. Parents, tired from work in a supermarket, a factory or a hospital, will struggle to do more than the basics for their children.
If schools stay shut until September, which looks possible in Ireland, children will have lost half a year of schooling.
But it won’t be a matter of just filling their heads with the knowledge they missed. They will have lost many of the good learning habits that take years to build up.
The confinement that governments have imposed has other costs. Data from China shows a surge in marriage breakdowns, of which children might bear the brunt. There is anecdotal evidence from Spain that there is a sudden increase in domestic abuse.
In years to come we might speak of a Covid Generation, as we discover the long-term impacts of the attempts to contain the virus.
That’s why the real political leadership is needed now, to explain why delaying the deaths of the elderly and infirm must be balanced by the needs of the young and seemingly strong.
The real leaders will be the ones who emerge from the herd.
‘Keeping kids out of school denies them the opportunity to learn’